Have you ever dreamed of having your own deserted island, surrounded by loyal henchmen and sharks with fricken laser beams? Did you ever want to run your own evil corporation, spread fear all over the world, and earn one million dollars? Thanks to Rebellion Developments and their release of Evil Genius 2: World Domination, you can! Well, except for the sharks with laser beams.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination mixes several different genres of game into one, though it primarily feels like a dungeon-building game. You have your own deserted island, complete with an abandoned casino as a front, and you’ll need to build up your evil lair while defending it against secret agents as they become more and more suspicious of your less-than-honourable activities. You’ll spend your hard-earned money burying laboratories, vaults, and dormitories into an inactive volcano, all while attempting to balance the comfort of your henchmen and make sure your generators are supplying your base with enough power.

You’ll also need to ensure that the casino attached to your base is well staffed and can keep the tourists adequately entertained in order to have some form of continuous income. Somewhat different to most dungeon builders, however, is the ability to build on multiple floors. This isn’t something that I have really seen in this style of game and it came as a bit of a shock when I realised I could do it. I’m used to having only a single level that can be built upon, so it was nice to discover that I wasn’t limited to the small patch of land I saw when I first started my game.

At this stage, players will have four geniuses to choose from to represent themselves, each having their own perks when it comes to building or controlling your henchmen. Given the obvious affinity for Doctor Evil, I chose to play as Maximilian, with his thick German accent and focus on having a sizable workforce to do his bidding. His most promising ability is being able to instantly train henchmen in the vicinity to become specialists, but he can also use an aura ability that speeds up their working times.

Red Ivan, the obligatory Russian, can override whatever his henchmen are currently doing and force them to work on a specific task until its completion, which is great for getting your lair built in a timely manner, assuming you can afford it. Red Ivan is also the hardest hitting of all the geniuses, as his additional ability will allow players to fire a bazooka, with the player directly controlling when and where the explosion will occur. This could be particularly handy when being overrun by agents.

Emma, the former spymaster, is adept at handling her minions, with her main ability purely making them more efficient at what they do, and it seems that she is the only one that has any form of passive ability like this. Her other specialty is being able to give them a pep talk, bringing them back into the fight when the need arises.

Finally, we have Zalika. Focusing mainly on science, her minions are able to quickly research upgrades and newer technologies. While it is still a bit of an aura ability, it significantly bolsters the speed at which they can research, whereas Emma is more of a small overall boost. Zalika also has the ability to immediately restore parts of your base back to fully functional with her nano-drones, and if you love the idea of maze-like corridors, you’ll love that she makes traps so much cheaper to use.

Evil Genius 2: World Domination also features a section very similar to turn-based strategy games, in that players can send out teams of henchmen to set up criminal networks across the globe. Once established, players will then be able to take part in schemes by sending even more minions out into the wild, and this is primarily where you’ll make your money.

The downside here is that these locations are also where your enemy is based, so taking part in too many money-making missions will draw their attention. A nice balance of making money and reducing heat is essential, but you can only have one scheme running in a sector at any given time. Naturally, I chose to hit Australia first, and it wasn’t long before the dollarydoos started rolling in.

The controls aren’t as intuitive as I’d have liked. I feel as though Two Point Hospital was relatively easy to play with a controller, whereas I found myself getting confused with Evil Genius 2: World Domination. There is absolutely no reason this should have happened because they have on-screen prompts telling you what button you need to press for the action you’re trying to make. The main struggle here is that you have to completely deselect whatever it is that you have selected before you can move on to something else.

There were countless times that I used Max’s aura ability accidentally while I was trying to target an agent infiltrating my lair, and I feel that perhaps a different control method could eliminate this. Imagine selecting a unit in an RTS, realising you’d click the wrong squad, so you move the mouse over the correct one and click again, but suddenly, the first squad you selected has thrown all of their grenades. That’s basically what this felt like. Using the “A” button to select a unit and to use their ability seems counter-intuitive.

It’s a little cheesy, but I absolutely loved the music the moment it started, and even without looking at the screen when it started, I knew what kind of game I was about to play. It has that kind of secret agent come evil genius vibe to it and lends itself perfectly the whole time. I had a good chuckle during the tutorial as well, with Maximilian voicing his distaste at being told what to do by the mere lackey that is the tutorial narrator, swiftly erecting a statue in his honour after he was dealt with accordingly.

Having said this, the dialogue and animations are all very child-friendly, which seems to be the norm for dungeon-builders. The characters and animation are all very cartoony in appearance, and defeated enemies will simply fall over and immediately turn into a body bag before being transported away to the incinerator – no mess, no fuss. Even with its cartoon nature, Evil Genius2: World Domination is incredibly pleasant to look at.

The map is brilliantly thought out and displayed, while the characters all have their own uniqueness to them. You can easily tell who is a standard minion over who is a guard or scientist, and even after they’ve trained into their specialised roles, they carry over the hairstyles and skin colours they originally had. It could have been simpler for them to just have one or two models to represent each class, but they went that step further and made them feel somewhat real.

I have to admit that I wasn’t really looking forward to Evil Genius 2: World Domination, but Rebellion Developments have created a game that is legitimately a lot of fun to play. With four evil geniuses to choose from and three islands that you can build your dream lair on, there is no right or wrong way to play. It’s a great title that lets you just sit back and chill out, or you can take it a little more seriously and micromanage the heck out of it. Whatever your plans are, you’ll be ruling the world in no time.

Written by: Mathew Lindner